Decoding UAE’s online travel space
The three co-founders of Musafir.com, Sachin Gadoya, Albert Dias and Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulla Al Thani saw a fantastic opportunity to crack into the online travel space and this lead to the creation of Musafir.com.
Identifying the need of the hour and a gap in the UAE’s online travel space, Musafir.com has grown to become the first premium-experi- ence travel website in the region. Offering flights to over 3,000 destinations, hotel stays in over 85,000 properties around the world, endless holiday experiences are now available at a click of a button.
Generally, there is very little difference between other OTAs and Musafir. It’s mainly in the actual technology that goes behind a lot of these products. At the end of the day it is about making sure that the technology works well and efficiently for the customers. So, the real difference happens to be in efficiency, service quality and ease of use. “Those are the USPs we believe in and we have stood behind since the day this company was founded,” says Albert Dias, Co-founder, Musafir.com.
Talking about the market share, Dias, informed, “As an OTA, the Middle East doesn’t stand in the place of other markets where we have ordered in statistics across the market. We are fairly confident that in the B2B online space we currently count for 15 to 20 per cent of the market space.” In UAE, the numbers indicate that roughly 20 to 25 per cent business comes to online travel agencies and the remaining tends to be with traditional businesses.
Happy with their growth in this space, Musafir.com is poised for further expansion. “We are tapping other markets in the GCC region including Qatar and Saudi Arabia. An Arabic website is also being devel- oped to cater to a lot of native Arabic speakers,” says Sachin Gadoya, Managing Director, Musafir.com Regarding the B2B arm of the company, “80 per cent of our business tends to be driven from the B2B as opposed to B2C space. It is predominantly corporate business,” Dias further stated.